


Pocket-Sized

by Donda



Series: The Adventures of Tiny!Max [1]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Crack, Fluff, Gen, Max is Pocket Sized, Post-Movie(s), Tiny!Max
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-09
Updated: 2016-02-20
Packaged: 2018-04-30 18:19:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 12,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5174291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Donda/pseuds/Donda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Max is inexplicably shrunk down to pocket-size.</p><p>Idea originally prompted by <a href="http://v8roadworrier.tumblr.com">v8roadworrier</a> and <a href="http://youkaiyume.tumblr.com/post/132527622908">drawn</a> by <a href="http://youkaiyume.tumblr.com">youkaiyume</a> on tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> If you haven't seen [this gem of a drawing](http://youkaiyume.tumblr.com/post/132527622908) yet, go look at it before you read. Don't worry, I'll wait.  
> Seen it? Okay, good.

Nobody quite knew how it happened. One day Max was his regular self, and the next morning he woke up buried in a blanket that was almost too big and heavy for him to lift off himself.  
  
He struggled with a muffled _hmmmf_ and managed to crawl out from under the scratchy thing. _Okay, what the hell just happened?_ This was new, even for his nightmares. He looked around, noting the vastness of his usually small room, then pushed himself up, walked shakily to the edge of the bed and looked down at the sheer drop below him. This was too surreal. No way this was actually happening.  
  
He sat down on the edge of the bed and waited to either wake up or stop hallucinating. It was a long wait. He considered going to get help, but there was no clear way to climb down, and that jump would probably break something. Plus, he wasn't particularly excited to face anyone in this form - or get stepped on - much less try to explain it. So he waited.  
  
He waited until night fell again. Maybe if he slept, he'd wake up and be okay. He took off his jacket to use as a pillow and tucked himself under the edge of the blanket, but sleep did not come easily, and morning brought no luck.  
  
By mid-morning he had accepted that maybe this was somehow a thing that was actually happening, and was working himself up to jumping down and going to find help. A knock at the door stopped him.  
  
"Max? Are you here?" Furiosa called through the door after a moment of silence. "Nobody saw you yesterday. You're not sick, are you?"  
  
"I'm, uh… I'm here," Max finally admitted, but his voice was as small as he was, and he was pretty sure she couldn't hear him.  
  
The door opened anyway, Furiosa mumbling something that included "fool" and "wandering off." She glanced around the room, didn't see any sign of Max, and turned to leave again.  
  
"Wait!" He yelled this time to try to be heard. Furiosa stopped in her tracks and slowly turned around, unsure she had actually heard the faint voice behind her. Max waved his arms from the edge of the bed, and she finally zeroed in on him.  
  
She stood frozen in the doorway. She blinked once. Twice. Squinted at him disbelievingly. "What the hell? Max?"  
  
"I, um. Could use some help…"  
  
She finally came over and squatted by the bed, looking at him closely. "What…" She couldn't even finish the question. Max took a few steps back, tilting his head back to look up at her towering form. She reached toward him, pinched the back of his jacket between her thumb and forefinger, and lifted him up to eye level, staring at him with pure bewilderment.  
  
Max wiggled and kicked, grunting his displeasure at being picked up this way, and Furiosa almost burst out laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation. How else was she supposed to react? This shouldn't have even been possible.  
  
She set him down on the open palm of her metal hand and lifted him up to eye level again, taking a moment to compose herself so she wouldn't actually start laughing. That was not an appropriate reaction right now. This required a cool head.  
  
"Okay. So. You're tiny."  
  
Max gained some semblance of footing on the metal beneath him and looked at her with the most miserable expression she had ever seen on his face.  
  
"Do you… know how this happened?"  
  
Max shook his head.  
  
"Well, we can, um…" She paused. "Okay, I have no idea what to do about this. Maybe the Mothers will know something?" She was grabbing at straws.  
  
Max doubted it, but it wasn't like _he_ had any ideas. "Maybe."  
  
She tipped him carefully into her flesh hand and cupped him protectively against her, hiding him from view as she turned to hurry down the hallway.  
  
She encountered Toast first. "Emergency council meeting," she told her shortly. "Gather everyone, soon as you can."  
  
"Is everything alright?" Toast looked worried.  
  
"I'll tell you in the council chambers." She turned on her heel and headed to find some of the other women. Max prodded at her palm, trying to get her attention.  
  
"Too hot. Can't breathe."  
  
She checked to make sure nobody was coming down the hallway then opened her hand to let him stand. "Sorry."  
  
"Also… I'm hungry. And thirsty." He hadn't had anything since the day before yesterday, and it was starting to wear on him.  
  
"That I can do something about." She turned around and started back toward the Meal Hall. She hid him in one of her belt pouches when she got there, and took just enough food to make it look like she was getting a snack for herself before she headed to the council chambers.  
  


* * *

  
  
"Alright, what is it, girl? What's the emergency?" Marin crossed her arms, looking at Furiosa with a raised brow after the Sisters and the Vuvalini had gathered.  
  
Furiosa eyed each of them, knowing this was not going to be an easy thing to explain. Without a word, she reached behind her, found the back of Max's jacket again, lifted him out of her belt pouch (ignoring his grumbled "stop that!"), and set him on the table in front of her. A momentary silence prevailed over the council members.  
  
"You've got to be kidding." Dag's voice was the first to break the silence.  
  
Max crossed his arms.  
  
"How could I kid about this?" Furiosa motioned toward him with both hands, exasperated.  
  
"That's not possible." Toast shook her head, leaning forward to squint at him.  
  
"He's… he's… kind of adorable…" Cheedo scooped Max up and cupped him in both her palms, looking at him with a little smirk. Max gave her a tiny growl. Furiosa smiled faintly. She had to admit it was true, but didn't want to say so out loud.  
  
"Let me see him." Marin snatched Max out of Cheedo's hands, lifting him by his jacket as Furiosa had done.  
  
"Hey! Hey!" Max swung a fist as she prodded at his chest with a finger.  
  
Max ended up getting passed around the table, each wanting to look at him up close to convince herself that he was in fact Max shrunken down. When he finally stumbled back toward Furiosa, she put the parcel of food down for him, and he plopped down, chewing hungrily on a grape nearly the size of his head.  
  
"We have no idea how this happened. Or how to turn him back." Furiosa stared down at him with a lost expression.  
  
"When did it happen?" Nida asked.  
  
Max spoke up around a mouthful of grape. "Yesterday morning. Just woke up like this."  
  
"I hate to say it, boy, but you might be stuck like that."  
  
Max stared glumly.  
  
"Witchcraft." Everyone turned their heads toward Cheedo. "Is witchcraft a thing?"  
  
"Like eye of newt and all that? I don't think that's possible. It's just stories."  
  
Cheedo just pointed at Max in response, and Dag sat back, unable to deny the answer. They were certainly dealing with something beyond the natural.  
  
"She might have a point," Capable said. "I've heard rumors of wasteland shamans and the like. Maybe one of them did this. Maybe one could reverse this."  
  
"I've seen their ilk. Even met a couple who claimed to be able to do magic," Nida put in. "Never put much faith into those claims, though."  
  
"Would there be one here? Someone had to have done that to him." Toast reached across the table and pulled Max over to her again, still hardly believing that this was possible. Max huffed a sigh, giving up on trying to get them to stop picking him up.  
  
"I don't know. But we'll look." Furiosa wrapped up Max's parcel of food and stood up. "Toast, can you get the War Boys moving on that?" She coaxed her to release Max, and put her hand out, palm up for him to climb onto. Max gave her a thankful look. She lifted him up to her shoulder this time, and let him climb over. He sat on her shoulder pad, hanging on to one of the slats for balance. She thanked the Mothers and took her leave.  
  
Furiosa stepped out into the hallway. "Where do you want to go?"  
  
"Mm… With you." He didn't want to be alone with his thoughts at the time. And to be perfectly honest, he was still pretty freaked out by this whole thing. Furiosa was always a sturdy support for Max when his mind got away from him. Furiosa nodded and headed down the hall with Max on her shoulder.


	2. Chapter 2

Furiosa's plan for the day had been to do some repairs on the trading rig, but there would almost certainly be War Boys there, and she didn't particularly feel like trying to explain to more people than she had to why Max was suddenly barely taller than her hand, and figured he didn't either. She also wasn't going to make him hide in her belt pouch all day, so she decided to go for doing some weapons and ammunition inventory instead. That room was usually empty unless they were preparing for a battle, and Toast would probably appreciate the help.  
  
She counted bullets, took stock, organized the supplies. Max sat quietly, watching her work. He wished he could do something himself. He didn't like sitting around feeling useless. Furiosa seemed to pick up on this after a while (or maybe it was the quiet sigh he let slip). She grabbed a pistol, moved over to the workbench along the wall, and stripped it, laying the pieces out neatly. Next she set Max down, handed him the proper brushes and cleaning rod, and went back to what she was doing.  
  
This kept Max happily busy while she worked. (And she had to admit, seeing him clean a gun with a brush that was taller than himself was pretty funny.) He would grunt when he was done with one, and she would reassemble it, put it away, and disassemble another for him to work on.  
  
They worked together until the ammunition was inventoried and the weapons were cleaned (by Furiosa's hand more than Max's - with his small size he could only do so much so quickly - but he helped). Stretching her sore shoulder and neck, Furiosa decided it was time to grab some dinner and turn in for the night. But Max wasn't ready to go back to his room. That was where this nightmare started, and he doubted it would be where it ended. He voiced this opinion quietly (so quietly that Furiosa almost couldn't hear him - his habit of mumbling was not going to work out well in this form), and she agreed to keep him with her.  
  
Furiosa considered sharing her bed with him - it wouldn't have been the first time they had slept side-by-side to try to chase the nightmares away, and it wasn't like he would take up any room - but she was afraid of crushing his tiny form in her sleep, even though rationally, she knew she didn't move when she slept. She made a small bed for him in the corner of her room instead so he could get up if he wanted to, and where she wouldn't accidentally step on him. One of her scarves would have to suffice, and that seemed good enough for Max as he arranged it into a small bundle and nestled into it. But he knew he wasn't going to sleep. Last night's nightmares felt somehow larger than himself, crushing down on him, and he was not looking forward to experiencing that again.  
  
He eventually fell asleep anyway. The soft warmth of Furiosa's scarf was soothing, and he awoke in the morning to a calm that he wasn't used to feeling. Furiosa was awake, watching him quietly with a thoughtful expression.  
  
"Breakfast?" she asked when he finally sat up. She had been up for a while, and had already gone to the kitchens to snag something to eat. Max nodded, and they sat on the floor, silently sharing the tray of food Furiosa had waiting.  
  
"You're lucky you weren't out there on your own when this happened," Furiosa mused.  
  
"Mm." They probably never would have heard from him again. (Though at least he would have had a mansion of a car to live in and enough food to last him years.) He wondered if she was trying to tell him he should stay at the Citadel more and wander less. He found himself smiling faintly.  
  


* * *

  
That day, the War Boys were out in full force searching the Citadel for anybody that wasn't supposed to be there, and scouring through the people down below in search of anyone admitting to being a shaman (or anything of the like). None of them had received official information on why they were doing this, though rumors of Max's current condition were starting to spread. (Nobody really believed it.) To be fair, Furiosa hadn't sworn the women of the council to secrecy about this, and it wasn't like it strictly needed to be secret. It was just easier left unannounced. And Max was happier that way, anyway. He never liked people making a fuss over him.  
  
Max fidgeted more and more on Furiosa's shoulder as days passed. He wished he could do something, rather than sit around and wait for other people to solve his problem. Furiosa tried to keep him occupied in whatever ways she could. It seemed a busy Max was a happy Max. Or at least happier. It turned out his size made him very helpful in a number of tasks, including cleaning sand out of tight spaces in machinery and retrieving those dropped nuts and small parts that tended to get lost into the inner workings of a car under repair.  
  
Gradually more and more people around the Citadel learned that the rumors were, in fact, true. Furiosa tried not to carry Max around in crowded areas, but they were both tired of trying to keep him completely hidden. Max grumbled and growled at the prodding fingers and wide-eyed stares, and more than a few times Furiosa had to snatch him back from the hands of a curious War Boy who had plucked him off her shoulder when she wasn't paying attention. They meant no harm, really, but something as odd as this was hard to leave be.  
  
On the fourth day, the War Boys brought Max a gift. Max wasn't sure if it was meant as consolation, or just because they thought it was something he needed now. He stood, staring dumbly at the item they proudly placed in front of him.  
  
It was a car. A small, plastic car. Well, not small to him. To him it was about the right size. It was a convertible, probably made as an accessory toy for a doll, but the War Boys had painted it black, spiked the rims, added a roll cage, and even built a rammer grill on the front. It looked in all respects to be a perfectly suitable wasteland car… In Max's size.  
  
Furiosa finally burst out laughing.  
  
Politely, Max opened the door and climbed in. He tested the wheel, felt the front tires move with it, and unexpectedly found pedals by his feet. He looked down. They weren't plastic like the rest of the car, but looked like small bits of scrap metal, sticking out of notches cut in the plastic. Cautiously, he pressed on the gas pedal. The car shot forward.  
  
Max was somehow not prepared for this. His eyes went wide and he wrenched the wheel to the left, swerving around the forest of feet in front of him as he fumbled for the brake pedal (it wasn't quite where his foot was used to finding it), before he finally brought the thing to a stop several feet behind the group. So this was why they put him on the floor before presenting him with the gift. He sat, gripping the wheel with white knuckles as the boys gathered around him again, laughing good-naturedly.  
  
"The speed control might be a bit touchy," one of them commented as he crouched down and pulled open the plastic hood to poke around.  
  
Max climbed out to look. They had actually rigged up a small electric motor to drive the car. He was impressed.  
  
"We know what it's like to lose your car," another of them said, as if Max's current inability to drive was the result of something happening to his car rather than himself. "We thought this would help."  
  
"Here, try that." The boy crouched in front of the car finished adjusting something and closed the hood. They all stepped out of his way as he climbed back in and eased his foot on the accelerator. The car still tended to jump into motion, but at least it was more manageable now.  
  
Max was pretty sure nobody was going to take him seriously driving this thing around the Citadel, but he was honestly appreciative that they would put this much work into something for him. He thanked them for the gift, and eventually the grinning War Boys dissipated to go back to work.  
  
Furiosa was trying very hard to hold a straight face. She walked past him, not bothering to pick him or the car up, and broke into a smile when she heard the soft hum of the electric motor fall in beside her. They made it half way down the hallway before she started laughing again. Max swerved, deciding to test the rammer grill on Furiosa's foot (the War Boys never built anything half-heartedly when cars were involved). That just made her laugh harder, and she stumbled to avoid stepping on him. Max couldn't stop himself from grinning in response. He could get used to hearing her laugh.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's some, uh, reference material for [Furiosa](http://v8roadworrier.tumblr.com/post/131197012811/oh-no) and [Max](http://hardyness.tumblr.com/post/132258025862/tom-hardys-smile-on-the-set-of-mad-max-fury-road) if you're having trouble picturing things.


	3. Chapter 3

Max had always declined to go to the Sisters' nightly group dinners, but since Furiosa often went, Max now found himself going too. It was on the sixth day of the search for a shaman, as they all sat on cushions around a low table, that Toast announced that she was calling the War Boys off the search.  
  
"I think we have to face it. If there is any help for Max, we're not going to find it here."  
  
Furiosa spooned a bit of soup broth into the hose cap Max had been using as a bowl and took the time to cut off a couple small chunks of vegetable to add to it before she passed it to him. "So we look elsewhere," she answered practically.  
  
"Wait. Before you go driving off to who-knows-where in the desert, how do we even know a shaman will be able to help?" Dag took a piece of flatbread and dunked it in her soup.  
  
"Do we have any other leads?"  
  
Silence.  
  
"We have to start somewhere."  
  
Max sunk down with his bowl in his lap. If the shaman idea didn't pan out, they were already out of ideas. He might have to learn to get used to being small. He looked up at Furiosa.  
  
Capable sighed. "The question is, how did it happen? If we knew that, it might lead us to the solution."  
  
Eyes turned to Max, who was making a frustrated sound as a chunk of carrot slipped off the toothpick (one from Toast's seemingly endless supply) he was using as a utensil and plopped back into his soup. He looked up. He shrugged. "Told you. Just woke up like this."  
  
"Yeah, but did you eat or drink anything strange?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Did you feel anything different?"  
  
"Felt small."  
  
"Before that."  
  
"No." They'd been over all this before. He didn't know any more than they did.  
  
"Did you offend anyone last time you were out in the wastes? Meet anyone unusual?" Toast tried.  
  
Max shrugged again. There was an almost collective sigh from around the table.  
  
The conversation eventually turned to less uncomfortable topics after their meal. The women seemed to have quickly adjusted to Max's change (easy for them to do - less easy for Max), and thankfully were no longer fussing over him constantly. Just sometimes. (Except for Cheedo. She apparently loved cute things, and that included Max now. He could tell she was trying to leave him alone, but sometimes couldn't resist the urge to pull him over to her and set him on her shoulder.)  
  
The women talked amongst themselves. Max wandered around the table aimlessly, trying to ward off the sleepiness of a full stomach (Furiosa always ended up giving him too much, and he invariably ended up eating it all).  
  
A pudgy hand wrapped around Max suddenly and lifted him off the table. His call for help was drowned out by an excited shriek from Dag's son Aster, who had apparently gotten bored of his toys and toddled over to the low table unnoticed. Dag turned just in time to see Max rapidly on his way toward Aster's mouth.  
  
"No, no, no, sweetie! Don't put that in your mouth!" She grabbed his arm just in time and carefully pried Max out of his grip. "You don't know where he's been," she added with a smirk as she set a now ruffled Max back on the table. Max patted himself down as if to a make sure he was still whole, took a deep breath to fill his crushed lungs, and decided it was probably safest to stay near the center of the table from now on.  
  
Furiosa tugged lightly on his jacket, wordlessly drawing him over. He sat in front of her, facing the rest of the group, and she laid her arms on the table, a protective wall around him.  
  
They talked until late. He didn't know when he fell asleep, safe among friends, but he shot awake, swinging fists when Furiosa tried carefully to pick him up.  
  
"Hey, it's okay. It's just me. Sorry."  
  
Max looked at her blearily, then pulled himself to his feet and climbed onto her offered hand.  
  
"You were dead to the world. I almost thought I could get you back without waking you up." She had tried to wake him gently, but he hadn't woken up to her voice at all.  
  
It was an unspoken agreement that Max slept in Furiosa's room now. She carried him back and set him on the floor to wander over to his bed (which Furiosa had woken a few days ago to find he had moved closer to her own bed. The following night she had found it under her bed). He settled down in the black fabric of the scarf and stared up at the underside of her bed thoughtfully. 

 

* * *

  
Two days later they were getting ready to leave. Furiosa had had to tie up some Citadel business the previous day, but she promised Max they would be out of there as soon as they could to find someone who could help him.  
  
She normally would have considered the Interceptor a bit too small to pack for two for a journey of indeterminate length and destination, but with Max's size, there was that much more space to pack supplies, and for all but the trip back, Max was going to be eating and drinking next to nothing, so what they had was going to last that much longer. She calculated they could search for 50 days on what they had before they'd need to find more.  
  
"You sure you want to be out there on your own?" Dag asked Furiosa when the Interceptor was provisioned and ready to go. Max grunted and frowned at her from atop his car. "Sorry, mate. You can't exactly hold a gun or punch anybody to any effect."  
  
"We'll be fine," Furiosa answered.  
  
"Good luck," Cheedo offered. She gave Max the most careful of hugs, standing on her tiptoes and pulling him to the edge of the roof to hold him to her shoulder with one hand (she had become unusually fond of him in his tiny form). Max crumpled up his forehead and patted her shoulder awkwardly. Cheedo stepped back to offer Furiosa a more conventional hug.  
  
"You watch her back, boy." Marin threatened to flick him on the shoulder, and Max swung a good-natured punch at her hand. Furiosa hid a smile. He was coping with his new size remarkably well, all things considered.  
  
Furiosa wrapped her old Imperator's scarf around her neck and put Max on her shoulder. He climbed over the folds of cloth and settled himself between her neck and the fabric. She resisted the urge to ruffle his hair as it tickled against her jaw. Instead, she climbed into the driver's seat, offered a quick wave to those seeing them off, and turned the key in the ignition (who used keys anymore? It was almost archaic). The engine roared to life and they were quickly on their way.  
  
"Don't say hope is a mistake," she teased him as they pulled out of the Citadel. "We're going to fix this."  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...I'm just going to [put this link here](http://youkaiyume.tumblr.com/post/133243054873/i-couldnt-resist-more-tinymax-no-thanks-to), because it's relevant.


	4. Chapter 4

They tried Gastown first. Max wasn't so sure shamans were the type to live in cities (especially ones as nasty as Gastown or the Bullet Farm), but they both agreed that places with high concentrations of people were a better bet than wandering aimlessly through the wasteland, hoping to run into someone. Plus, there were always rumors to pick up on, which often had some semblance of foundation in truth.  
  
Max climbed down her arm as they drew close to the gates and hid himself by the gearshift. He knew Gastown, and knew that he certainly did not want to be seen here.  
  
Furiosa was met by guns, but upon seeing her face, they called for the gates to be opened.  
  
"Weren't expecting you today," one of the guardsmen said.  
  
"Not here on business," she answered and drove onto the bridge and into Gastown.  
  
Max climbed back up out of the center console and perched on the seat next to her.  
  
"You should stay here," she said as she pulled the car to a stop outside of one of the shantytowns. At the Citadel they were safe and among friends. Here, not so much. She didn't want to end up with Max somehow stolen away and sold as some novelty in a wasteland market.  
  
"Like hell I will."  
  
She looked down at him and felt instantly bad for treating him like a liability. "You can't be seen."  
  
"Belt pouch," he answered, and then, "two sets of ears are better than one."  
  
She emptied out one of her belt pouches for him, and tucked the Interceptor key in next to him after he settled in. As she set out, she couldn't help but keep her hand on her hip above the pouch, guarding against pickpockets.  
  
Furiosa was largely met by skeptical looks when she asked anyone about shamans. A few people would tell her snippets here and there ("oh yeah, ran into one just last month. Mad, he was.") and some of the rumors floating around were already about Max himself ("heard one attacked the Citadel. Started shrinking people to the size of lizards!"), but mostly she got nothing. After a tiring day of roaming through all the shantytowns and many of the streets Gastown had to offer, Furiosa and Max found themselves without a single solid lead, other than some questionable descriptions of possible shaman types someone had claimed to have seen.  
  
"Bars," Max grunted when she stepped into an alcove in a mostly empty street and opened her belt pouch. "Wait for night and try the bars. That's where the information is."  
  
Furiosa sighed quietly. Too many memories of things gone wrong at bars in Gastown (mostly involving War Boys on trading runs). But he was right. If anywhere, that was the place to ask.  
  
It was at the fifth sketchy bar (by which point Furiosa was noticeably tipsy after having to trade for drinks at the previous four bars in order to get the bartenders to start talking), that they finally heard something useful.  
  
"You're looking for a shaman? Ain't seen one of those, but Gastown does have its own resident witch doctor."  
  
They left right away. Furiosa made it about half way there, and then, "shit." Her mind was too muddled for this. She decided right then and there that the bars were a terrible idea, despite the lead they had gotten.  
  
Max poked his head cautiously out of the belt pouch. "She said left at that refinery tower." Furiosa turned left.  
  
Between the two of them, they managed to find the back alley shack the supposed witch doctor called home. Furiosa banged on the sheet metal door, and a surprisingly young man opened it a moment later.  
  
"We're looking for the witch doctor."  
  
"We?" The man looked around suspiciously.  
  
"Are you a witch doctor, or not?"  
  
"That's me… Let me guess. Hangover remedy?"  
  
Furiosa glared at him. Admittedly, though, the moonshine was really starting to get to her. She supported herself on the doorframe as the world spun. "No. Can we come in?"  
  
"…Sure." The man already looked like he was pretty sure he couldn't fix her problem.  
  
Once inside, Furiosa studied him suspiciously. "Can you unshrink a person?"  
  
"What?"  
  
"A man, shrunken to the size of my hand. Can you fix him?"  
  
"I don't have time for drunks, lady."  
  
Furiosa growled as he tried to herd her back to the door. She pushed back and finally reached into her belt pouch and brought Max out, holding him up on an outstretched palm.  
  
The man stared. "Bullshit."  
  
Furiosa sighed.  
  


* * *

  
In the end, it turned out the man wasn't so much a witch doctor as he was a con artist, dealing out strange 'cures' with a voodoo flourish in the hopes that people would believe they worked. Needless to say, he had no idea what to do about Max, and was so shocked by the sight of him that he couldn't even fake a cure. Furiosa told him she wouldn't tell anybody he was a fake (wasn't her problem anyway) as long as he swore to keep quiet about having seen Max. ("I will kill anybody who tries to touch him," she had whispered threateningly. Max just chalked that bit of possessiveness up to the moonshine.)  
  
Furiosa stumbled back to the car and flopped into the driver's seat with a sigh. Max scrambled out of her belt pouch and climbed (with difficulty) up to the dashboard as Furiosa slowly cranked the back of her seat down.  
  
"Water," Max grunted.  
  
Without sitting up, Furiosa reached around blindly and found a canteen and held it out to him, as if he could lift it.  
  
"Not me. You. Hangover."  
  
Furiosa drained it wordlessly and dropped it on the passenger seat. She was soon asleep. Max sat up on the dashboard and kept watch. Stock still in the darkness of the car, nobody would see him.


	5. Chapter 5

The Bullet Farm was even less successful than Gastown, and the following day they found themselves driving into the desert in search of wanderers or another settlement, whichever came first. Max had some other towns and wasteland tribes marked on his cloth map, but unfortunately it had been in one of his pockets when he shrunk, so it was tiny enough that only he could read it. Furiosa followed his directions, though she had to sit him on the dashboard to see where he was pointing.  
  
They happened across a few tribes, some of them friendly, some of them less so. (Max lamented the new dents left in his car by the guns of one hostile group, but at least he and Furiosa got away unscathed.) None of them had a shaman amongst them, though one remarkably welcoming group about ten days from the Bullet Farm did tell stories of a shaman who wandered the area. But they'd only ever see him once every few moons.  
  
Furiosa and Max sat around a campfire with them that night. Furiosa hadn't wanted to show Max to them (they only needed to know that she was looking for a shaman, not why) but she had been hard-pressed to refuse their offer of hospitality for the night, and Max was tired of hiding. He climbed out on his own, scaling her metal arm determinedly until she noticed him out of the corner of her eye and almost flung him off in surprise.  
  
"What are you doing?" she hissed as he made it up to her shoulder.  
  
"It's fine," he grunted, sitting down with an air that said _I'm not moving_.  
  
Furiosa huffed a short sigh.  
  
For a while, nobody saw Max in the dim light. It was a curious child who had come over to get a closer look at Furiosa's arm, who first laid eyes on him and drew the attention of the rest of the men and women sitting around the fire. Furiosa sucked in a breath as the child pointed him out loudly, and Max half-hid in her scarf, as if he hadn't really thought through what would happen if they saw him.  
  
Hesitantly, and after another grunted (but also hesitant) "it's fine" from Max, Furiosa let them pass him around the circle to stare in awe.  
  
“Well, that would explain the need for a shaman," one of them commented, and passed Max to the next person down the line. Furiosa watched them carefully as Max went from one person to the next.  
  
"Hold on… Green Bringer?" A woman held Max up so suddenly he almost fell off her hand, and squinted at him in the firelight.  
  
"Really?" More crowded in to look, and Furiosa had to physically hold herself in place, trying hard to trust that they wouldn't hurt him.  
  
"Yeah, yeah! He's even got the same ratty jacket as always!" She tugged at the tiny shoulder pad. "I told you, mate, we can make you a better one!"  
  
If Max was saying anything, Furiosa couldn't hear him over the commotion.  
  
"Got yourself into a real mess this time," someone laughed, taking Max and holding him up to inspect him. Max squirmed in his grip, and Furiosa finally moved in to take him from them.  
  
"Green bringer?" she asked as she brought him back to where they had been sitting. She wasn’t surprised he hadn’t told them his name, but had to wonder why they made up the one they did.  
  
Max shrugged. "I trade them some of the plants and seeds Dag gives me.”  
  
The people apparently appreciated it, because they became even more hospitable after that. Max perched on Furiosa’s knee the rest of the evening, and the group laughed and talked around them (in no small part about Max’s sorry state). They plied them with food, and gave them a warm place to sleep. In the morning, they promised to keep an eye out for the shaman, and to try to keep him around for Max if he did appear.  
  
“They were fond of you,” Furiosa commented, trying to hide a smirk as they got back in the Interceptor. She had always assumed he was as gruff around other people as he had been when she first met him.  
  
“I give them a good price,” was all Max would say. He always accepted less than they offered. Just enough to make it a trade, without really gaining much for himself. That wasn’t the point. The point was to spread the Citadel’s wealth of life.  
  
They circled in ever widening arcs around the area for a few days, searching for the shaman they had been told about. They didn’t have much luck, and eventually stopped in the shade of a rock cliff to rest for a day or two.  
  
Max got bored quickly, as he seemed wont to do since he was shrunk down. There just wasn’t much he could do at this size. After he finished climbing around under the Interceptor’s hood, checking that everything was in working order (not that he could have fixed it himself had it not been), he decided to take a walk, just to think and be alone for a while.  
  
“It’s not exactly safe on your own,” Furiosa reminded him carefully. she hated that she had to, but it was true.  
  
Max grumbled at her and wandered off anyway. She tried not to keep an eye on him like he was a child with no survival experience. She knew he knew how to handle himself out here, but being that small introduced a whole new potential for danger, and she just wanted him to be safe.  
  
(It figured that Max would manage to get himself into trouble.)  
  
Not twenty minutes later, Max came sprinting back toward the Interceptor, a surprisingly sizable lizard not far behind him. And it was catching up. Furiosa darted forward, scaring the lizard off its path, and scooped up Max when he collapsed in the sand at her feet.   
  
“I told you.”  
  
Max conceded with a grunt. He looked a little shell-shocked, and scrubbed his hands over his face. “We don’t talk about this. Ever.” It was more than a little embarrassing to have nearly become food for something that Max was used to catching and eating himself.  
  
Furiosa stifled a smile. “Not a word from me.”  
  
Max stayed around Furiosa from then on. He didn’t particularly want to risk becoming prey to the creatures of the wasteland again.  
  
That night was unusually cold, and even though Furiosa always gave Max her scarf to wrap himself up in to sleep, ever since he became tiny he always found himself getting especially cold when the temperature dropped. He shivered himself awake and laid there for nearly an hour before he accepted that he wasn’t getting back to sleep like this.  
  
Furiosa woke suddenly, an unfamiliar proximity making her body lay stock still on instinct, muscles tight and ready to jump into action. There was something touching her neck, and her mind raced through all the possible threats it could be, and how to handle each. But there was nobody else in the car. Nobody but… Max.  
  
She relaxed as suddenly as she had tensed upon waking. She felt him shiver, curled up against her neck, but as she lifted her arm to him, careful not to move her neck or shoulder, she also felt his breaths slow with sleep. She found the scarf he had dragged with him, and draped it carefully over him and her own neck before she closed her eyes and drifted back to sleep, feeling comfort in his small amount of warmth against her skin.


	6. Chapter 6

They moved on, and after several more days of searching, they settled down again along a road that Max said was frequented by travelers.  
  
As in Gastown, most of the people who happened by gave Furiosa shrugs or skeptical looks when she asked if they knew of any shamans. Nobody could help, nobody had seen any.  
  
“Best chance,” Max said when she expressed doubt. “Seen all types on this road.”  
  
And all types there were. Families trying to find a better place, lone wanderers like Max, traders who hawked their wares at the drop of a hat.  
  
One such trader was particularly determined that Furiosa would trade for his useless knick-knacks if only he tried a little harder, endeared himself to Furiosa a little more. He welcomed himself into the shade of the blanket canopy she had set up, stretched between the Interceptor and two poles jammed in the ground. And he talked. Endlessly.  
  
He was harmless enough. Just annoying. And he brushed Furiosa off when she told him to leave, which was where she drew the line. She left him for just a moment, deciding to get one of her bigger, more threatening-looking guns to chase the man away with, when he suddenly hooted in surprise.  
  
“What’s this?” He plucked Max up from his hiding spot under the upturned, partly-broken ceramic bowl the trader had lifted curiously, and held him dangling in the air. “Hoo, hoo! Isn’t this something! Incredible!”  
  
Furiosa turned as she realized what caught his attention. She snarled, lunging toward him, but he jumped to his feet, pulling Max out of the way just in time.  
  
“Hey, calm down! You’ve got the makings of a hell of a deal here! I’ll give you—“ He cut himself off as she leveled a pistol at his head.  
  
“Put him down.”  
  
“Woah, lady. I’m offering you a lot, here. Anything you want, name it.”  
  
“He’s not for trade. Put. Him. Down.”  
  
The man lowered Max slowly to the ground, and Max was quick to go to Furiosa, not wanting to be anywhere near the trader if she decided to shoot him after all.  
  
“Get out,” she growled dangerously, the gun still aimed at the trader’s head.  
  
“Alright, alright.” He moved cautiously to the wares he had spread out earlier and started packing them up quickly. “I’m telling you, though. Thing like that, worth a small fortune.”  
  
“He’s not a thing.”  
  
Max watched her finger tighten on the trigger. He reached out to stop her. This man wasn’t worth the bullet. But she’d never feel his touch through her boot, and he moved back instead.  
  
The trader finished packing up his things and scampered off. Furiosa kept the gun trained on him until he was well on his way down the road again.  
  
She sat back in the shade with a tired sigh, giving Max an exasperated look. “Need to find you a better hiding place.”   
  
“Or less nosy guests,” he huffed.  
  
She nodded with a small laugh, and reached for some jerky, ripping off a bite for herself before starting to tear small bits off for Max.  
  
Max thought about how the trader must have seen him. Like a small animal, kept for amusement and nothing else. “Thanks for, uh. Saving me from becoming someone’s pet,” Max muttered, taking the offered shreds of jerky.  
  
“You think I’d do anything else?”  
  
“No,” he admitted. “But thanks.” Thanks was all he could give. They had always been approximately one-for-one on saving each other from trouble or death, but now he couldn’t return that favor. He hoped the need wouldn’t arise.  
  


 

* * *

  
  
They were days without lead, and Max was about to give up and tell Furiosa to move on. Maybe they’d have better luck wandering the wastes again. Perhaps they should try another town. Their supplies were more than half gone. They’d have to do something sooner or later.  
  
But for once, luck was on their side.  
  
A man approached, dressed in scrappy leathers with a wooden crate strapped to his back, rattling with all of his worldly possessions. “Are you the one looking for a shaman? Some people down the road sent me this way.”  
  
Furiosa stood up from the shade of the canopy. “You’re a shaman?”  
  
“At your service.”  
  
“And you can do… magic?”  
  
He raised a brow. “Yes, I suppose you could call it that.”  
  
Furiosa gave him the same suspicious look she gave to anybody about to discover Max, and asked him the same question she had asked the witch doctor in Gastown.  “Can you unshrink a man?”  
  
The shaman considered it thoughtfully, seating himself just outside of Furiosa’s bit of shade. “Can I see him?”  
  
Furiosa hesitated. Could she trust him? Slowly, she crouched down to reach under the Interceptor where Max was hiding. He climbed onto her hand and she brought him out, ready to defend him if she had to.  
  
The other man didn’t even flinch. He reached out after a moment of consideration, asking wordlessly if he could take Max, and Furiosa reflexively pulled him back toward her. Max patted her hand and looked up at her with what he hoped was encouragement. Sure, they didn’t know if they could trust this man, but he was the best chance they’d found. And Max trusted Furiosa to have his back if anything happened. She met Max’s eyes, and he gave her a nod.  
  
Slowly, she reached out until her hand met the shaman’s, and Max climbed over cautiously.   
  
The shaman studied him carefully, prodding him gently to turn, lifting one of his arms, holding him close to his face to look in his eyes. Max shrank back, a little uncomfortable. Furiosa sat tensely.  
  
“Who did you piss off?”  
  
Max scowled, crossing his arms.  
  
“We don’t know,” Furiosa answered.  
  
“Hm. Unusual.” He lowered Max to the ground, and laid his hands in his lap as Max moved back toward Furiosa. He still regarded him thoughtfully. “With something like this, one usually knows what one’s done to deserve it.”  
  
“Look, we can’t find who did this to him. That’s why we’re out here looking for a shaman. Can you help?”  
  
He hummed quietly. “Turning someone tiny isn't a simple thing. Not by a long shot. There's no set recipe for doing it, or undoing it."  
  
"But there is a… a recipe."  
  
"Maybe. But if you don't do it right," he paused, searching for a way to explain it, "if you don't do it backward from the way it was originally done, who knows what could happen."  
  
Max and Furiosa were silent.  
  
"I can try to find some way to undo it, if that's what you really want. But I'll come out and say it up front. It may well kill him."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (This chapter brought to you by the fact that I can never make things simple.)


	7. Chapter 7

The shaman had gone silent. He had made his offer. It was up to them to decide now.  
  
Furiosa made no move to speak. She looked down at Max as he sat quietly for a long time. This was not an obstacle they had anticipated. She couldn’t see his expression from this angle, but she watched his body language change subtly as he deliberated. Eventually he squared his shoulders and sat up a little taller, and she knew his answer.  
  
“What do you need?” Max finally asked the shaman.  
  
The man shook his head. “It’ll take me some time to learn that. A few days, maybe. Will you be here?”  
  
“We’ll be here.” Max nodded.  
  
“Then I will do what I can.” He stood up and left without another word.  
  
Max looked up at Furiosa, and they shared a look that needed no words. It was a risk, but if Max was ever going to be his regular size again, it was what he had to do. Furiosa tried to hide the worry on her face. She didn’t want to lose him, but it was Max’s choice, and he had made his decision. She’d back him up in whatever way he needed.  
  


 

* * *

  
  
Furiosa had a sort of grounding effect on Max. He still wasn’t what he’d call sane, but she kept him centered more in reality. She kept the voices down. They were always there, but quieter at least. Sometimes she even helped with the nightmares. But not always. It wasn’t the usual horrors and images of other people’s deaths that woke him this time, but images of his own.   
  
Furiosa was sitting, staring out at the desert around her, lit blue by the moon, when Max’s small fist struck her palm. He shot up suddenly from where he was nestled in her open hand, with an almost imperceptible noise (which at his size sounded embarrassingly like a squeak).  
  
“It’s okay,” she murmured, as had become her habit when he woke like this. She looked down at him calmly, saw the tension slowly ease out of his shoulders, though it remained on his face.   
  
Max would rarely talk if left to his own devices, but he almost always did after a nightmare. It distracted him. Furiosa could tell he wanted to talk this time, watched him silently fumble for words, but nothing came to him.  
  
“What’s it like? Being that size?” She didn’t know if it was the right thing to talk about, but it was the first thing that came to mind.  
  
Max looked up at her for a moment. “Surreal.”  
  
“It must be hard.”  
  
He pulled his shoulder up in a shrug. “Not so different.”  
  
Furiosa looked at him disbelievingly.  
  
“Well. I mean. Everything’s bigger. Looks different. Feels different. Can’t do much myself anymore. But life’s always been hard… And you help.” His eyes were downcast. “Wouldn’t be here. Without you. Can’t repay that.”  
  
The corners of Furiosa’s mouth quirked up. “There’s nothing to repay. You forget. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you, either.” She lifted him up and tilted her head down to gently touch her brow to his.  
  
Max felt the rest of the tension slowly dissipate from his body. The gesture was strange like this, but the meaning was the same. He leaned into it and let a small smile cross his lips, sighing quietly against Furiosa’s skin.  
  
The days passed slowly, and there wasn’t much to do, especially for Max. Really, it wasn’t much different from the time spent here before the shaman showed up, but now there was the anticipation of the solution to his problem. Max was pacing restlessly, enough to make Furiosa finally pick him up and drop him on her shoulder (if only to make him sit still) when finally the shaman came back down the road, recognizable by the large wooden box on his back.  
  
He sat down and looked from Max to Furiosa and back to Max. “I’ve found a way to do it. There are a few things I’ll need for the ritual. Getting them may be trying.”  
  
“We can get them,” Furiosa answered. “Whatever you need.”  
  
“I already have the basic things for a ritual, as well as a couple components specific to this one. What I still need are six white feathers from a bird that is still alive, a snakeskin - shed, not butchered - a bit of powdered iron, the wood of an acacia - a small branch will do. Just enough to make a small fire. And this might be the hardest - I need a handful of viable seeds.”  
  
Max gave a one-sided smile. Clearly the shaman didn’t know where they came from.  
  
The seeds were the easy part - Furiosa had brought a few different types to trade if necessary, and the shaman had his pick of what type he thought would work best. The pinch of powdered iron they filed from Max’s intake manifold. (Max didn’t want to, but eventually had to concede that without a magnet and no other source of iron that wasn’t on his car, it was their best choice.) That just left the feathers, snakeskin, and acacia branch.  
  
Furiosa wanted to make sure they did this right. “It doesn’t matter what kind of bird the feathers are from? As long as they’re white?”  
  
“No, it doesn’t matter. But it’s very important that you’re sure the bird is alive at the time of the ritual. If it’s not…” His grim face said enough about what would happen if that wasn’t the case.  
  
“And the other things?”  
  
“They don’t strictly need to be from a source that is still alive, but it is better if they are.”  
  
Furiosa wanted to ask what the chances were that this process would actually kill Max, but she didn’t want Max to have to think about that, so she kept quiet. It was a risk he was willing to take. If this was what they had to do, then this was what they had to do, regardless of the odds.  
  
Having given the shaman the components they had, they prepared to search for the remaining three things.  
  
“How will we find you when we have everything?” Furiosa finished throwing the last of their things into the Interceptor.  
  
“Come back here. I’ll be watching the area.” The shaman bid them goodbye and disappeared down the road again.  
  
The snakeskin seemed the easiest, so they looked for that first. It didn’t take them long to track a snake’s path to a pile of rocks. They waited the night, and watched in the morning until the snake emerged to sun itself and eventually left. And then Max ventured in. He could see next to nothing, and hoped with every step that there wasn’t another snake in here. Or even a lizard. He wasn’t too fond of lizards anymore.  
  
He explored every turn he could find, felt around every crevice in the maze under the rocks, but found nothing. He shook his head at Furiosa when he finally found his way out into the daylight again. They continued the search.  
  
They were on their fourth snake burrow when Max finally felt something that crinkled in the darkness. Furiosa knelt outside, holding her breath. They were careful with each burrow, but she couldn’t help but worry that maybe there was something still in there. She wondered what she would do if Max never came out again. She tried not to worry about him as much as she did. He was still tough, despite his size, but there was no denying the fact that he was so very small. It was hard not to worry over someone when literally anything could be a threat to them.  
  
Finally he emerged triumphantly from the ground dragging a large shed skin behind him. Furiosa let out a quiet sigh of relief. She took the skin, placed Max safely on her shoulder, and headed back to the Interceptor. One down, two to go.


	8. Chapter 8

With only two components left to find, their goal seemed within reach. They both knew it probably wasn’t going to be easy, but that had never stopped them before. Max thought he remembered seeing some trees (he wasn’t sure if they were acacias or not) not too long ago, but he didn’t remember exactly where they had been. He waved to a vague area of his map when Furiosa asked.  
  
The bird was another issue. Neither knew where they would be able to find one with white feathers out in the open Wasteland. Max remembered magpies, but hadn’t seen one in a long time. It came down to trade. Maybe they could find a captive bird. They needed to get supplies soon anyway, and Max knew of a town on the way to the vague area where he thought he had seen trees. With Max’s guidance, they made their way there.  
  
Max tucked himself into Furiosa’s belt pouch again when they reached the town. She grabbed the seeds she had brought to trade, and they both hoped that they would find what they needed.  
  
Furiosa scoured the small marketplace. The basics were there, but not much else. Nothing fancy, very little more than what was strictly needed to survive. There were no live animals to be seen.   
  
She found one merchant whose wares included a small pile of wood. There were broken-up pieces of plywood and short lengths of board left over from before the Fall, old and dry and weathered. Moving deeper into the leaning structure this merchant called his stall, she came across a pile of sticks and branches, and inspected them carefully. The shaman had told them how to identify an acacia by its leaves, but she doubted if there was a way to identify a bare branch.  
  
“Are any of these from an acacia tree?” It was worth a try.  
  
The merchant stared at the pile of branches blankly, and shrugged. “They burn. What’s it matter?”  
  
“Where did you get all these branches?”  
  
His mouth tightened for a moment. That had been the wrong thing to say, she realized too late. “Not telling you that! What do you think this is, a charity?”  
  
“I just need—“  
  
But she had apparently set the man off. “I’m not going to tell you how to steal my supply!”  
  
“I don’t want—“  
  
“Rude, that’s what that is. Come into a man’s shop and ask him how to steal away one of his most valuable resources…”  
  
Furiosa considered threatening him for the information, but people were already staring, so she put her hands up in front of her to try to deescalate his growing rage, then turned and left.  
  
She ended up trading for some more food, water, and guzzoline, and left the marketplace otherwise empty-handed. But if that man had branches, it meant there were trees somewhere around here, and that knowledge was better than nothing.  
  
Max became uneasy as the days passed. It was almost indiscernible at first; he simply talked less and grunted more. It was neither a big change, nor particularly out of the ordinary for him, so Furiosa didn’t pay it much mind. With time, he slowly grew more tense, and he started to fidget nervously. But he didn’t volunteer to talk about it, so Furiosa didn’t push. She knew it had to be hard on him, to be stuck like that, and she knew he was frustrated by not being able to do much to solve his own problem. The best she could do for him was to help him get through this quickly, so she focused her attention on finding the components they needed to get Max back to his regular size.  
  
They zigzagged through the area, searching for any sign of trees, even the scrappiest of twigs. Days passed, and Max was beginning to have doubts that this was where he had thought he had seen the trees. If that merchant had found a supply somewhere, it certainly wasn’t as near as they thought.  
  
“Another town,” Max offered, some days later. Civilization didn’t crop up just anywhere. There was usually some resource at the foundation of every gathering of people in the Wasteland, often water. And natural water meant a chance for trees to grow. At the very least, a town meant trade. “This one’s bigger,” Max added, pointing to the dot on his map despite the fact that Furiosa probably couldn’t see it. “Probably better trading.”  
  
Furiosa gave a nod, and they turned their path to the town.  
  
This town thankfully had a large marketplace with an array of different goods from numerous merchants. Furiosa ran her hand over relics from Before, many of them things she had never seen in her life, and she marveled at the selection of machinery and parts available from another merchant. But she didn’t let herself stray long from what was important. She traded for more supplies sparingly, making sure they had just enough for ten more days of searching, just in case, plus the trip back to the Citadel with Max at normal size, and she saved the rest of what they had for the components of the ritual.  
  
An old woman with a collection of small cages scattered around her caught Furiosa’s eye. She offered the woman a quick nod as she leaned down to inspect them.  
  
“Fresh meat,” the woman croaked cheerily. “Any flavor you want.”  
  
Furiosa saw rats and lizards and snakes, and finally came across a bird, in a small square cage. It was a pigeon, its feathers temptingly light, but still grey. Not what they needed.  
  
“Taste for bird?” The woman noticed Furiosa’s interest. “Got more.” She motioned to another group of cages piled together on her other side. There were more pigeons, a couple crows in larger cages, and there, a single white bird. A dove, Furiosa thought she remembered it was called.  
  
“That one.” She pointed to the caged dove.  
  
“Good flavor on that one. Not much meat, but between you and me,” the woman lowered her voice secretively, “better than the crows.”  
  
Furiosa didn’t bother to tell the woman that she had no plan to eat the bird.  
  
“Alright, what have you got for me?”  
  
Furiosa brought out her collection of seeds and laid them out. She tried not to show the old woman how much she wanted the bird. It was never a good idea to let a merchant know you’re desperate for something, or the price will go high enough to bleed you dry.  
  
They reached a fair agreement, and Furiosa handed over two bags of seeds as the woman reached into the dove’s cage, brought out the bird, and stuffed it into a small burlap sack.  
  
“The cage?” Furiosa questioned, concerned that the bird wouldn’t survive several more days if left in a sack.  
  
“Not for trade. These things don’t grow on trees, you know.”  
  
Furiosa hardly noticed the odd phrase, so out of place in a treeless wasteland, assuming it was something left over from before the world fell. She was used to Max occasionally saying such things anyway.  
  
She made a generous offer anyway, but the woman refused, and Furiosa reluctantly went back to the marketplace to search for something they could house the bird in instead. The dove flapped and flailed in its cloth prison, and she hoped it wouldn’t stress itself to death.  
  
A large plastic jug could be modified into a cage, she thought, but the few she found were full of water, and the price was higher than she could afford. The water containers she kept in the Interceptor were all metal to survive life on the road better, and so were unusable. As she searched, the bird became more and more stressed, and she finally returned to where she hid the Interceptor, having found nothing else suitable.  
  
She let Max out of her belt pouch first, and then started pulling the drawstring out of her bag. “We’ll tie its leg,” she said in answer to his questioning look, “keep it tethered. Help me out here.” She handed him the drawstring and carefully pulled the dove from its bag. She held it down in front of Max so he could tie the string snugly around the bird’s leg.  
  
Furiosa looked from the bird to Max and back at the bird when he was done.  
  
“…What?” Max looked a little concerned at her growing smirk.  
  
“Just about your size,” Furiosa commented. “We could make a little saddle, and—“  
  
“No.”  
  
“You could go anywhere!” she persisted.  
  
“Uh-uh. No.” Max crossed his arms and glared, but couldn’t help the small smile that eventually crept across his face.  
  
Furiosa gave him a playful shove. She twisted around to put the bird in the back, and tied the other end of the cord to the handle of one of their water canisters. The dove flapped around, cooing all the while, but stayed firmly tethered to its spot atop the canister.  
  
Furiosa started the engine, and they continued onward in hopes of finding the last thing they needed.  
  
As they drove, Max’s unease became evident again, and the mood in the Interceptor grew tense. Furiosa looked down at him occasionally as he fidgeted. She had left him alone about it the last several days, but the tension was enough to drive her crazy, and the ever-increasing crumple in his forehead spoke of growing worry.  
  
“What?” she finally asked.  
  
Max looked up at her like he hadn’t thought that she would notice. “’S nothing.”  
  
She huffed a sigh but let him be.  
  
Two days later, they stopped in the shade of a rock face to wait out the hottest part of the day. Even without side windows, the Interceptor became a veritable oven in the sun. Today was especially hot, and even the engine was starting to overheat.  
  
Furiosa carried the dove’s water canister out of the car and placed it in the shade. A cooked bird was not a live bird. She checked the tether, poured a bit of water out of her canteen into a small tray for it, and sat back with a sigh. Max echoed the sigh from her shoulder. He absently watched the bird peck around, his mind on trees more than anything.  
  
It occurred to him some time later that the bird was worrying at its leg quite intently, and only a moment later, he saw the cord fall away, the knots undone from persistent pecking. He scrambled up, leapt off of Furiosa’s shoulder, and tackled the bird.  
  
Furiosa jumped to attention and stared for a brief moment, unaware of what possessed Max to do that, as he and the dove rolled off the canister and hit the ground behind it. She jumped up when she realized the bird was no longer tethered, nearly knocking the canister over in her scramble to grab the bird. Its wings fluttered madly as it tried to peck at Max, his arms locked around its neck.  
  
Her hand brushed feathers, but it flapped away from her and took to the air. It didn’t make it too far with Max’s weight dragging it down, but it tried again as Furiosa rushed after it, and Max’s grip slipped. He plummeted the few feet to the ground and landed with a pained grunt. Furiosa nearly stepped on him, but stopped herself short and scooped him up quickly. She placed him on her shoulder as she watched the dove flutter up to the top of the rock face.  
  
Running around the side, she found a climbable slope, and scrambled up it. The bird perched on the edge of the rock face for a moment, panting in the heat, then jumped as Furiosa came into view again, and flew off. Furiosa ran harder, slipping and nearly falling on the rocky slope, pulling herself up and continuing. The bird perched on a rock at the far end of the bluff and watched her warily. As she got close, it fluttered off again, and Furiosa cursed.  
  
Max tugged at her scarf, trying to stop her as she scrambled after the escaped animal. “It’s not worth it.”  
  
“Max, we need this.”  
  
“No, I mean…” His voice stumbled and halted. He looked down. “The whole thing,” he finally managed. Fear had been growing in him for days, but he had kept pushing it down, telling himself that he needed to do this to get back to his regular self. But as he watched this vital component flutter away, he realized that he wasn’t nearly so scared by the thought of having to stay like this forever, as he was of the thought that he might die trying to go back to the way he was.  
  
Furiosa glanced at the bird, perched again on a distant rock, and stopped reluctantly. She took him off her shoulder and looked at him, not sure she understood. “You mean the ritual? You’ll be stuck like that…”  
  
He mumbled around some half-words for a moment before he found full ones. “It’s not so bad. Being small.”  
  
Furiosa just stared disbelievingly, her eyes asking him if he was sure.  
  
He paused and fidgeted a little. "Just… don't want to be a burden." He depended on Furiosa for a lot since he became small. Maybe he could eventually learn not to, but he knew he’d never be truly independent again.  
  
Furiosa was still standing, holding Max on her palm. She cleared her throat, sat down by a large boulder, and set Max on it so he was standing eye-to-eye with her. “You’re not a burden, Max. You never will be.”  
  
Max nodded in acknowledgement, but kept looking down, his forehead crumpled.  
  
“I’m not saying I want you to risk your life for this ritual, but you should think about this.”  
  
“I have.” He looked at her earnestly. “Rather be small than maybe dead…” He’d have the rest of his life to keep thinking, anyway. He could always change his mind and seek out the shaman again if he decided it was worth the risk. He couldn’t change his mind if he did this and it went wrong.  
  
Furiosa was silent for a long time. When finally she spoke, it was with a sigh, somewhere between relief and resignation. “Okay.” She gave him one final hard look, trying to read if there was any doubt, but Max stared back, seeming sure of himself. “We’ll tell the shaman, and then we’ll go home.”  
  
“Home,” he repeated quietly. He wouldn’t mind finally letting himself call a place _home_.


	9. Chapter 9

Capable looked notably concerned when Furiosa parked the Interceptor and stepped out of it alone.  
  
“Where’s Max? Don’t tell me—“  
  
Max poked his head sleepily out of Furiosa’s scarf. He had insisted on taking both watch shifts the last few nights so Furiosa, who had been driving for days, could get more rest.  
  
“You didn’t find anyone?” Capable looked dismayed.  
  
“We did. But the ritual wasn’t worth it.”  
  
Max blinked between the two women, content to let Furiosa tell the story.  
  
“Surely with the Citadel’s resources, we could afford to help him.” Capable reached out and gingerly took Max from Furiosa’s shoulder, looking him over in concern as if to make sure he was still okay.  
  
“No, it wasn’t that,” Furiosa corrected. “The ritual might have killed him instead of making him his regular size.”  
  
Max nodded. “Rather be like this.”  
  
Capable looked a little sad for him, but then a small smile crept across her face. “So you’re finally here to stay?”  
  
Max looked down at her palm below him for a moment, then back up at her. “Guess I am.”  
  
Capable’s smile spread. “Come on, the others will want to see you two.”  
  


* * *

  
  
“So, you’re staying a pipsqueak, huh?” Toast held Max dangling in the air by the back of his jacket, and Max heaved an exasperated sigh.  
  
“Well I’m just glad he came back at all.” Cheedo pulled him out of Toast’s hand and held him in both her palms. “He could have died, you know!”  
  
“You’re not going to be rid of her now, mate,” Dag teased the both of them. “Hope you’re prepared for that.”  
  
Cheedo stuck her nose in the air and placed Max on her shoulder, but he didn’t stay there long.  
  
“No, no, he’s great like this. I’m not complaining!” Toast said as she plucked him off Cheedo’s shoulder. “I’ve got a bike with some sand in the engine. I can’t get to it myself.”  
  
“You can’t just use him like that!” Cheedo protested. “He’s a person!”  
  
“I’m not using him! The guy loves engines. Right, Max?”  
  
“Give him a break, he’s tired,” Furiosa interrupted. She held out a hand toward Toast, who reluctantly placed Max in it. Max gripped her thumb as it curled in toward him, hanging on as if doing so would stop someone else from picking him up again.  
  
“But seriously. Can I get some help with that bike?”  
  
Max blinked at Toast, then gave her a small nod.  
  


* * *

  
  
Bit by bit, they adjusted to Max’s new life. Furiosa made a little rope ladder and hung it off the side of her bed so he could come and go as he needed in the night. The people of the Citadel learned to step carefully, watching for a small, black car darting through the hallways on occasion. The Sisters got used to seeing Max at their nightly dinners more often than not. But mostly, Max and Furiosa got used to each other’s near-constant company.  
  
Max continued to help in whatever ways he could, working in tight spaces that nobody else could reach, or cleaning and organizing small parts. Sometimes it was difficult work, moving pieces and tools around that were almost as heavy as he, and other people would insist it would be much easier for them to do themselves, but he’d wave them off with a grunt and carry on anyway. He had to do something around here, and he’d be damned if they were going to take the few tasks he could do.  
  
It took a while for Max’s wanderer tendencies to fade. Despite his acceptance of his new size and his new life, sometimes people just became too much for him, and he’d itch to escape to the desert. Furiosa learned not to be too alarmed when she’d find him missing. The gardens at the top of the Citadel were as far as he would go, and she’d occasionally find him there, wandering through a forest of crops, or sitting on the edge of the rock, staring out at the desert. (It wasn’t typically easy to find him, though, and she often left him alone as long as she could. Either he’d come back on his own, or she would go to find him just before the sun set and the cold set in.)  
  
When it got to the point that Max would disappear to the top of the Citadel multiple days in a row, Furiosa would finally put him on the dashboard of his car and drive him out into the desert. There was a small outcropping of rocks a little way outside of the Citadel, just far enough for Max to feel isolated with the spires of the Citadel small in the distance, but close enough that the area could still be seen by the Citadel’s watches. There Furiosa wedged an old wooden crate on its side between two boulders, hidden from prying eyes and high enough to keep the animals of the wasteland out, with a cord for Max to climb. She would leave him with everything he needed to survive, and a flare gun loaded and propped up between two rocks. When he was finally ready to come home, a white flare in the distance would be his signal. And gradually, Max needed to leave the Citadel less often, and stayed away for shorter trips. The Citadel was truly becoming his home.  
  
He started accompanying Furiosa on trading runs. Between Furiosa and the retinue of War Boys that came with them, he eventually felt safe enough to let himself be seen by people outside of the Citadel. Someone could still try to snatch him, sure, but they wouldn’t get far. And as more people learned of Max, fewer were inclined to try to mess with the Citadel or its trading parties, as rumors spread about Furiosa’s suspected power, whispered words that it was the Citadel’s liberator herself who had the ability to shrink a man down. Furiosa tried to discredit the rumors at first, but eventually gave up. Max, at least, seemed to get a kick out of the stories and the added respect and awe Furiosa commanded because of them.  
  
Months after their return, Furiosa found a white bird on one of the Citadel’s trading runs, and she kept it. Not as a push to Max, but as a safety net. A reminder that he still had control of his life, and if he ever needed to change his mind, they would be ready.


End file.
